One of the most notable contributors to the development of contemporary British architecture is being mourned after acclaimed Hopkins Architects co-founder Sir Michael Hopkins passed away last week at the age of 88.

A pioneer of the High-Tech movement, Hopkins was considered one of the most successful building designers in post-1970s England thanks to key projects such as 2001’s Portcullis House and the 1987 Mound Stand at Lord’s Cricket Ground that displayed a unique sensitivity towards historical context while helping to propel his generation of architects to widespread critical acceptance.

Joining with contemporaries Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, Hopkins broke conventions in almost every typology he worked with in order to establish the style against both the then-current and ages-old material heritage of the country that he would eventually come to reference in a significant late-career turn. 

He founded his own practice alongside his wife and fellow Architectural Association classmate Patty, shorty thereafter garnering major commissions for the Schlumberger Cambridge Research Centre, Westminster Underground Station, and Glyndebourne Opera on the heels of their successful open-plan design for the live-work Hopkins House, which the couple completed in Hampstead in 1976.

Hopkins’ work was finally awarded with the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1994 and remained highly relevant in a new century defined by increased public investments with a prolific output that included designs for the Evelina Children’s Hospital and London 2012 Velodrome stadium post-millennium.

Hopkins will therefore be remembered as someone whose work thoughtfully evoked artistic notions of the past while innovating in the use of lightweight materials that would become a precursor to the profession’s increasingly technical and sustainably-minded future. His influence also garnered recognition in the form of an OBE knighthood in 1995 and a place as an Academician in the Royal Academy of Arts in 1992. 

“Michael was obsessive about architecture and tenacious in refining a design until he was absolutely satisfied with it,” Patty Hopkins said in reflection to the Guardian finally. “He was usually, and annoyingly, right. He made the world — and the buildings so many people live, work and learn in — more beautiful. We will miss him more than we can imagine.”

A further statement from the firm's partners also reads as follows:

“Michael will be sadly missed by all of us who were lucky enough to have worked with him. He was consistently rigorous in his thinking, brilliant in his analysis and fearlessly creative in his designing. To have worked with him on so many projects was an education like no other and an absolute privilege. With Michael the process was always intensely focussed and the conversation that led to the buildings always began as a voyage of discovery typically centred on establishing a sense of place, about how to make historic connections, how to put the materials together in an honest and contemporary way so that the building would appear calm and make immediate sense to the end user. Nothing was ever taken for granted. He was greatly respected both as an architect and as a person of integrity and we will all miss him enormously."